From Ebay's wiki; you're more likely to win and at a lower price.
Quote:
Uses of bid sniping
Economic analysis of sniping (Roth and Ockenfels, 2000) suggests that it is a rational price-minimizing strategy for bidders in auctions. For example, a novice antiques buyer may prefer to bid in auctions which already have bids placed by more experienced antiques buyers, on the grounds that the items which the experienced buyers are interested in are more likely to be valuable. In this case, more informed buyers may delay bidding until the last minutes of the auction to avoid creating competition for their bids, leading to a lower winning bid. Analysis of actual winning bids on eBay (Yang and Kahng, 2006) suggests that winning bidders are more likely to have placed a single bid late in the auction, rather than placing multiple incremental bids as the auction progresses. |